Fresh insights into the life, literature and legacy of the world’s best-selling author are promised to visitors of all ages when the expanded 125th anniversary edition of the International Agatha Christie Festival (IACF) takes place in her home town of Torquay in Devon, UK, from September 11-20.

Upwards of 10,000 people are expected to be drawn in by the festival’s nine days of talks, tours, book launches, exhibitions, theatre, films, writing workshops, vintage entertainments and by a celebrity guest list which includes broadcaster Kate Adie; novelists Martin Edwards, Sophie Hannah, Bonnie MacBird and Ali Sparkes; Christie scholar John Curran, theatre expert Julius Green and artist Tom Adams, among many others.

Speaking as the full programme was published online, Dr Anna Farthing (right), director of the 2015 festival, said: “As well as being the world’s best-selling author, its most translated novelist andthe UK’s most successful woman playwright, Dame Agatha Christie was a fascinating character, whose work was shaped by her life and times and whose enduring impact reaches much further than her writings. In programming this 125th anniversary festival, my aim has been to fully reflect this breadth and depth by supplementing favourite and familiar stories with new viewpoints and fresh insights – some of them never made public before – in ways that will appeal as much to younger people and newcomers as they will to lifelong fans.”

More than 100 events will be on the festival menu with each day taking a special theme, starting on Saturday 11 September with a Family Day of children’s author-led workshops, trails, stories and an outdoor show on the lawns where a young Agatha herself performed.

The week then continues with focuses on the First World War years; Miss Marple; the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, International Agatha, Agatha & Theatre and Agatha For Everyone.

At the heart of the programme will be a birthday party on September 15 at the festival’s main venue, Torre Abbey, while other highlights and locations will include:

an exhibition of previously unpublished photos from the Christie family’s private archives;

book talks and launches by, among others, Kate Adie (discussing Agatha & WW1); Sophie Hannah (whose new novel A GAME FOR ALL THE FAMILY was written while she was also working on her recent Poirot best-seller), crime writer Martin Edwards sharing episodes from his factual account, THE GOLDEN AGE OF MURDER and Julius Green, whose latest title CURTAIN UP, explores Agatha Christie’s output as the world’s most successful female playwright;

French cookery writer Anne Martinetti, author of a series of recipe books linked to writers/film-makers, preparing food from Christie stories in the kitchen at Agatha’s long-time Devon home: Greenway on the river Dart, near Brixham;

John Curran leading an illustrated Q&A with the artist Tom Adams, 90 next year, who between 1963 and 1975 designed around 100 covers for Christie’s paperbacks

daily workshops led by leading authors and publishers

a series of vintage and social occasions – among them a vintage fair, a tea dance, a cocktail party and a grand ball at Greenway

an introduction to poisons by A IS FOR ARSENIC author Dr Kathryn Harkup and a guided tour of the potent plants garden at Torre Abbey

A resident company of professional actors giving pop-up performances and readings

Events linked to the BBC’s new David Walliams and Jessica Raine series, PARTNERS IN CRIME, based on Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence stories plus a rare silent film featu
ring the same characters showing with a live piano accompaniment

A gala evening marking the 80th anniversary of the RNIB’s Talking Book for the Blind service and its choice of Christie’s THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD as its first

work of fiction.

The festival’s board is chaired by the author’s grandson Mathew Prichard, who also chairs Agatha Christie Ltd, which manages the worldwide literary and media rights to the author’s works.

He says: “I am delighted that the 125th anniversary of my grandmother’s birth in Torquay is being celebrated with such a lively and wide-ranging programme. I am also pleased that we havebeen able to release so much new material from the family’s collections so enabling visitors to see photographs which have never been on public view before, learn more about Archie Christie, the grandfather I never met, and to hear recordings of my grandmother’s voice when we mark the 80th anniversary of the RNIB’s Talking Books for the Blind service.”

He added: “I feel sure that my grandmother would have welcomed the diversity of the programme and how it will reach so many different
audiences, particularly through the workshop programme for emerging writers and the many new opportunities for children, older people, film-makers and local students to get involved.”

A day-by-day guide to the International Agatha Christie Festival 2015 can be found online at www.agathachristiefestival.com along with links to the online bookings system. Festival news is also available via a Facebookgroup or by following @AChristieFest onTwitter